Of all the Kindles that had their prices increased last week, the Kindle Colorsoft was hit the hardest in terms of how the price compares to similar models on the market.
The cheapest color Kindle is now $289.99. That’s a lot higher than color ereaders from other brands, especially since Amazon has yet to release a 6″ model. Kobo sells their 6″ Clara Colour for $179.99, and it’s currently on sale for $159.99. The Kobo Libra Colour sells for $259.99, and it has the same 7″ screen as the Colorsoft, and it adds page-turn buttons, double the storage space, and stylus support, although a stylus is not included at that price.
Pocketbook sells several color models. There’s the 6″ Verse Pro Color for $185.00, and the 7″ Era Color for $269.00. Both are waterproof like the Kindle Colorsoft, and both are comparable to it in several ways, and both are cheaper than Amazon’s color Kindle.
At $289.99, the Boox Go Color 7 sells for the same price as the Colorsoft, and Onyx isn’t raking in a boatloads of money through ebook sales like Amazon, so it goes to show how overpriced the Colorsoft really is now. The Go 7 Color uses the same screen, and it adds several hardware upgrades, including stylus support, a microSD card slot, a rotation sensor, page-turn buttons, a built-in speaker and mic, and it has 4x the storage space (64GB) as the base model and twice as much as the Signature Edition Colorsoft that sells for $319.99 now. Plus it has an octa-core CPU and 4GB of RAM to handle the Android OS.
Speaking of which, the Go 7 Color supports the Kindle Android app so it has access to the same content as the Colorsoft, plus a bunch of other reading apps and features not available on Kindles. From my experience, the Kindle Android app on Boox devices is perfectly functional, but honestly it’s nowhere near as smooth as using an actual Kindle. It’s good to have more options, though.
When doing comparison tests, I found the Colorsoft does have the best-looking color E Ink screen for reasons unknown since they’re all using the same Kaleido 3 screens from E Ink, but the overall design is nothing to write home about (it’s the exact same as the Paperwhite that sells for $90 less), and with the Kindle’s limited and locked down software I can see how people would prefer other options, especially at that price.
Amazon really needs to come out with a cheaper color Kindle now. Pushing upwards of $300 for an entry-level color model is just way too high, especially with a newer screen technology that is notorious for looking darker and less clear than older black and white screens. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon release a new cheaper 6″ color Kindle this fall.
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